I would like to wish Marry Christmas and happy New Year to all of Teachers and Students 

related with the Executive MBA realized by Stockholm University School of Business and Cracow Economy University School of Enterprenauership and Management.

Remember, allways look on the bright side of life and ... have many of Pinacoladas. See Virtual Pincoladas >>.

David Coleman is presented in his article the opportunities of virtual workspaces hidden behind virtual worlds. There will be possible that not only one avatar will be steered by real persons, but there will is also possibility of team building. Using such opportunity, the interaction in virtual worlds will change from one-to-one to many-to-many. For more detail and also other aspects of team workspaces read the article.

On the current development stage of virtual worlds they give members only entertainment and possibility of communication. The business is observing the process and surely will catch all opportunities to earn money on this new group of customers.

According to my analysis of virtual life I’d like to discus in this post the reason why people are going to virtual worlds. From the business point of view people are finding there a possibilities of entertaining. But what kind of entertainment is it? People are spending several hours sitting before computer and they have two main aims:

-        communication and interaction with others,

-        building own new, artificial personality.

Now, I’d like to look on those processes from psychological point of view. First of all people who are hiding after computers are building bigger walls between peoples. I think two persons can understand self very well in virtual reality but they won’t be able to communicate in real world. This process is very well visible in big metropolises like, London, Paris, etc. If you are in the train people do not speak together. Everybody wants to separate from others. One person is becoming alone in group of people. The virtual societies can push the same mechanism also to small towns and villages. I think such processes are very dangerous for the human civilisation. I think in the future there will be required promotion on real meetings for new generations which are growing now in virtual cities and worlds.

Looking on the psychological side of virtual societies, I see one very important aspect why people like more virtual life instead of real. In virtual life you can create more then one artificial personality (avatar). If one of your avatars loose trust of others, you can just kill this artificial personality and create new. Nobody will know that you are starting from beginning. You have a “clear account”. In real life nobody has such possibility. Our civilisation is targeted on signing persons who are making mistakes. The winner is someone who is making lower amount of mistakes…

I spent in my life many hours chatting with different people around the world. Now I know that I wasted too much time searching unknown. In my opinion everybody of us should building the local society instead of virtual. I think people should not forget real world! Life is too short.  

Today I found the right channel for economic analysis of second life. In the old edition of the blog, the author discus SL-economy with Linden Lab founder. Check the article. The newest information about events in second life are discussed on the NWN  blog.

Searching on possibilities of real revenue in virtual worlds I found pod casts of CBS News. On the page you can read and see in video area the reportage about virtual life. The video shows how the virtual world looks like and how the people are involved. Some of them spent weekly 40 hours in virtual world… are we going in „Matrix” direction?

But Sibley Verbeck, founder of the Electric Sheep Company see the virtual worlds as a place for entertainment and communication. In case of communication this virtual game can be important place in globalizing world. See video: Second Life.

From other hand virtual worlds are not free of real problems, like hackers, virtual crime. In such cases could be used real forces (e.g. FBI) to avoid problems.

Interesting way of virtual reality usage I found in the video where Cyndi Tenhoopen talks about opportunities of telemedicine. The parents have a option for checking the illness of child. If it is not strong illness they can check it via internet virtual healthcare. They have no to go to crowded emergency rooms. See video: Virtual Healthcare.

Credit card companies plan to enter virtual life too. They will create loyality programs where customer can earn virtual bonuses. More info about topic you can find in the following article.

Virtual life make avaible function which was and are unvailable for people. All the time a teleportation is a dream in a real world... but in the virtual world such dream becomes real. Read more on the blog about technical aspects of teleportation in virtual world.

You can check also new added link category: Integration on my blog.

Business world is looking for new oportunities. Amazon.com could be the first one who build the brige form real to virtual world. Read the article.

The first real retailer has opened the virtual store in virtual world selling virtual clothes. 

...American Apparel is the first major retailer to set up shop in Second Life, and since the store's debut the company has sold "about 2,000 items" for $1 or less, says Raz Schionning, the company's director of Web services. Purchasers can outfit their online avatars with digital renderings of slim-cut T's and dresses modeled after real-life merchandise...

For more read BusinessWeek article >>

Today, I digged deeper into virtual life. And here you can see examples of virtual e-commerce: slexchange.com or trade.secondserver.net.